CHAPTER XXVII.

THE STATE-WHAT IT MUST DO.

We are now to consider what the State must do. If the State is to exist, it is because there are certain things which must be done, and which it alone can do. Nothing can justify its existence, unless it meets some want, or necessity of humanity. Men cannot create; they can only act as necessity compels them to act. The State having been found a social necessity, this necessity will point out the most palpable of its duties.

We have seen that men are found who fail in doing their duty and violate the rights of others. In this fact is found a justification of the State; hence its first duty is to maintain order by protecting rights from violation and enforcing the performance of duties. If the State could succeed in this great work, peace and concord would prevail everywhere. But the State can only act in accordance with the divine law; it cannot prevent free agents from doing wrong, and from failing to do right; it can only affix penalties for a violation of duty, for an infringement of right, to be inflicted after the wrong has been done, the right violated, or the duty omitted. Hence the State cannot prevent wrong and crime; it can do this only incidentally by the fears which its penalties may inspire. The obligation of its laws rests wholly in the penalty attached to their violation.

The duty of the State, then, is to protect the rights of all, and

to enforce those duties in the execution of which the community have an interest. We will speak first of the rights which must be protected.

The first are the personal rights of the individual. Every human being is entitled to enjoy, unmolested from every other human being, the personal rights which he holds from God; and the State is bound to protect each in the enjoyment of these rights, by affixing proportionate punishments and penalties upon every human being that deprives him of these rights, or in any way impairs his enjoyment of them. Among these rights is that of selfculture, of self-development according to the laws of God. Every human being has a right to be protected in working out his own destiny according to his own views of duty. The State is bound, therefore, to afford him a mean of redress against all who would in any way interfere with these sacred rights, and by force or fraud compel him to shape his moral culture and moral judgments in conformity to the reason of others, and not according to his own. Hence he is to be protected against all associations, or combinations, or influences, seeking to compel a change of action or opinion without having first convinced the reason of its correctOne of these rights is that of free discussion. Every man has the right, nay is bound, to bring all to the truth as he understands it; he, therefore, must have the right freely to discuss those opinions which he deems to be right, and to examine critically those which he deems to be erroneous. Nor can such discussions interfere with any one's right to free development. It is the duty of all to verify their moral judgments, their beliefs, their opinions; hence each has a duty laid upon him to listen attentively to any speaker or writer, who shall calmly and temperately discuss a question of right or of duty; so that each may be able to give a reason for their beliefs, for the correctness of their moral judgments. While, then, full liberty is given for free discussion, the individual must be left free also to listen or not to listen as in

ness.

his judgment it shall appear right and proper. No one can be coerced into a change of opinion, nor compelled to listen to arguments which are put out with a view to work a change of his opinions. Each is alone responsible to God for his opinions, so long as he does not seek to impose them upon others. Whenever a person seeks to impress upon others opinions which tend to injure others, or to public disorder, or to a corruption of public virtue, the State is bound to interfere and repress by proper penalties such an infraction of personal and public right. No man can possess the right to persuade men to violate their duty to their Maker, and in that way degrade themselves as moral beings, until they throw off all restraint and become disturbers of the peace, and in the end, criminals. This right of repression is a delicate one, and should never be exercised but in protection of private rights and public order. Still all teaching ought to tend to the truth, and not to overturn the truth. The public mind, when its confidence in truth is shaken, tends to error in its opinion and to immorality in practice; since practice and life are but the manifestation of the principles within a man. Under these restrictions each person is entitled freely to cultivate his own intellectual and moral nature, and freely and fairly to discuss the great truths which lie at the foundation of all science and law and duty.

any one who as

It is said that every person is entitled to the legal and uninterrupted enjoyment of his life, his limbs, his body, his health and his reputation. These are all rights inherent in the person; rights which belong to him at all times and everywhere. Hence the State must protect his life by inflicting penalties upon sails it, or seeks to assail it. This is the greatest of all rights, and therefore should be protected by the highest of all penalties. So too should the law declare criminal every one who would injure another in his limbs, as it disables him from the discharge of many duties, in his health, as the loss of that tends to a loss of life; in his reputation, since his good name is a mean of usefulness, and

the loss of it must tend to destroy his influence over other minds, his prospects in life depending upon the good will of others, and finally his own peace of mind, his own happiness, that end to which all are working, and have a right to work.

So too is one entitled to be protected in the enjoyment of his family relations. As husband and wife, as parent and child, each are possessed of important rights, important as well to the community as to the individual. Hence the State must protect the husband in his rights to the enjoyment of the person, and society and services of his wife; while the wife also is entitled to be protected in her right to the enjoyment of the person, and society and services of the husband; and whoever seeks to destroy or impair these rights must be declared a criminal and subjected to suitable penalties. So, too, the rights of parents to the custody, protection, nurture, education and moral culture of their children, must be secured to them. No one can be permitted to interfere with or to disturb these important relations, and prevent the parent from discharging his duty to his offspring. God requires this at his hands, and the State must protect him in doing it. The child too has rights, which must not be overlooked. It is entitled to nurture, and the parents must be compelled to provide it, if they are so unnatural as to omit the performance of this duty. It is also entitled to be educated and taught that truth and those laws upon a knowledge of which depends the infant's future happiness. This right may be violated in two ways: parents may neglect to impart any education and instruction; or they may educate and teach erroneously. In either case, the State is bound to interfere; the child has a claim upon society to save it from the pernicious effects of ignorance, and from the more pernicious effects of error. The right of the parent is to teach his child that truth so essential to its happiness, the truth of its Creator, of its relations to Him, and its duties to all. The parent has no authority from God to teach his child error, which will become the curse of its life in all future

time. In a case flagrant in its character, the State has a right and is bound to save the child from the misery an unnatural father would inflict upon it. The rule is perfectly plain; the difficulty is in its application, in deciding when the proper case has arisen. The rights of parents are not to be interfered with but in a plain case; when the parent is training his child to become a pest and nuisance to others, and to society. Were a parent to teach his child to lie, and steal, and swear, and deny its God, surely the child is entitled to be protected from such an unnatural parent; one who has forfeited all his rights by misusing them; and the State has also a right, nay is bound to protect community against those who would educate their children to become criminal; surely the State is not bound to submit to this. It has God's law on its side, and the rights of the child calling for its protection. Such parents are criminals of no ordinary turpitude; criminals, guilty of the terrible crime of murdering the peace and happiness, the soul of their children; at a time too, when these young immortals are wholly incapable of self-protection, ignorant of the terrible character of the lessons they are being taught. The State will not work to the end for which it was established, if it will tolerate such gigantic crimes as this, out of any respect to the parental authority; this is forfeited by the parent; he is no longer standing in God's stead toIward his child, but in the devil's stead.

Another of these social duties is that of education. Every new born being is entitled to be educated and taught; so that it may become as far as practicable such a being as the Creator designed it to become. This duty, we have seen, is laid upon the community, since it can be well done in no other way. But men are found, who refuse to educate their children, who will refuse to pay their just proportion of the expense, or to pay any portion whatever. Hence the State is here also bound to see right and justice done ; right in furnishing to the young mind that education and instruction to which it is rightfully entitled; justice in compelling all to contrib